Though many IT organizations have embraced standards like CMMI and dramatically improved their software development performance, it has done very little to improve the quality and performance of IT support services. (customize for a heading)

The following Gartner study published in 2006 (figure 1) shows functional distribution of IT budget spent over a 5 year period. As can be seen by the chart, application development consumes an average of only 20% of the budget while the remaining budget is consumed providing IT support services.

Not only do IT support services consume most of the IT budget, they also require the most direct and continuous interaction with business customers. These factors suggest that we should have a separate methodology which directly addresses the management of IT services. A service management methodology and development methodology operate very well together, but we must know where one leaves off and the other begins. Both methodologies are important, but each is designed to accomplish different goals and measure different things.